


what we're working for

by waveridden



Category: NeoScum (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Heist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21857125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: “How are you not excited by a heist?” Pox does jazz hands at her, but with extra finger-waving. Her nails flash metallic in the dim light. “Robbing Fyre Tower, making it big, becoming notorious, what part of that don’t you want?”
Kudos: 6
Collections: 2019 AU December Challenge





	what we're working for

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above. Title is from Patience by Cotis.

It takes Van about five minutes to determine that Pox talks too much.

Pox seems blissfully unaware of this fact, because she keeps talking. And talking. And  _ talking. _ As though they’re not on a job right now, and don’t need to be paying attention.

Van takes a deep, cleansing breath, hoping that it successfully cleanses her. It doesn’t. Pox is still going on and on about… it sounds like she’s talking about rats. Van hasn’t been listening at all for the past hour or so, and she’s not sure how they got to the point of talking about rats. She’s not sure she wants to know.

“Pox,” Van says, her thin patience clear in her voice. Pox doesn’t seem to notice. “We need to pay attention so we do not miss our cue.”

Pox blinks, looking startled that Van has even suggested such a thing. “Our cue?” she repeats. “For the job? No, the cue’s not coming until later.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“We went over the plan, the pickup’s not supposed to happen until later.”

“Things don’t always happen when they are supposed to.”

Pox makes a face. “Well, of course not, but if we’re going to be just sitting here in a van waiting for someone to say that they need to be picked up, why shouldn’t we have a good time waiting?”

“I’m not here to have a good time,” Van says testily. “I’m here to get paid.”

“You don’t enjoy this?”

“I don’t work for the enjoyment of working.”

“That’s awful,” Pox proclaims. She climbs from the back of the van into the passenger seat, but she doesn’t sit facing forward. Instead, she slings her ankles around the headrest of the seat so she’s facing the back of the van, and leans back so her head and shoulders are resting against the dashboard. It gives Van back pain just from looking at her.

Despite herself, she sighs and adjusts herself so she’s facing Pox. She keeps one hand firmly on the steering wheel and the other loosely on the old-fashioned radio that Dak had insisted on using, because Dak is an inexplicable man on the best of days. But she raises her eyebrows and says, “Why should I enjoy this?”

“How are you not excited by a heist?” Pox does jazz hands at her, but with extra finger-waving. Her nails flash metallic in the dim light. “Robbing Fyre Tower, making it big, becoming notorious, what part of that don’t you want?”

“I never wanted to be notorious,” Van says, more sharply than she intended. Pox doesn’t seem to mind, just tilts her head, hair rippling over the seat and onto the floor. Van takes a breath. “I do this job because it feeds my family. I am not looking to get anything more out of this.”

“But you’re going to get more anyways, aren’t you?”

“That’s not my goal, and it shouldn’t be yours.”

“Oh,  _ shouldn’t _ be.” Pox waves a hand, accompanied by kicking one of her feet. “I’m allowed to want to be notorious, aren’t I?”

“You’re young,” Van says shortly. “Notorious criminals don’t get old.”

“Dak’s old.”

“Dak’s an idiot. And he’s lucky.”

“Plenty of unknown criminals die young too,” Pox says, a strange note to her voice. It’s not quite a challenge, but it’s enough for Van to meet hr eyes. There’s something flinty in there for the first time, at odds with her loose posture and her whole demeanor so far. “If I’m going to die young, I want it to be because someone knows I robbed the Fyre Tower.”

It’s a fool’s heist, one that Van doesn’t know why she agreed to. She surely would’ve said no if it hadn’t been for Lance and his damned hero worship, but Lance said yes, and so Van felt like she had to say yes, too. And if Lance is going to be locked up, Van is at least going to be there to say “I told you so” at the end of it all.

The problem is that it’s also a remarkably sound fool’s heist. Dak Rambo, for all of his idiocy and bravado, surrounds himself with brilliant people. His actor friend had been clever, in a subdued way, and he was the perfect inside man. His computer man was a genius. He even had a pickpocket kid, who stuttered and stumbled and took Lance’s watch so smoothly that Lance still hasn’t noticed yet.

So Van has to assume that when Dak says Pox is a demolitions expert, he means it. And it’s not that Pox seems stupid or anything, but Van wasn’t expecting a flighty wisp of a girl with a massive coat who said things about wanting to be notorious. Pox hasn’t blown anything up, she’s mostly just here to make sure Dak’s explosives are primed correctly and to make sure they have a backup plan. Van has no idea if she’s actually good at what she does.

“If I die, I’d rather die unknown,” Van says simply. “And be sure that my family will be safe after.”

Pox nods slowly and begins to run her hands through her hair, winding it up into a ponytail and then letting it loose again. “My family’s already in danger,” she says. “So I figure, at this point, fuck it, right?”

Van opens her mouth, not quite sure what she’s going to say, when the radio crackles. “Van, you there?” Lance says, voice distorted.

She grabs at the radio immediately. “Lance, what’s wrong?”

“Why does something have to be wrong?”

“Hey, Pox!” Dak shouts from the background. “You know how you color code all the switches on the explosives? The stuff that’s hard to keep track of?”

“I gave both of you guides to the color-coding,” Pox says indignantly. “Hand-made guides! With stickers!”

“I lost mine,” Lance admits.

“I left mine in Xanadu,” Dak adds. “Which color is thirty minutes?”

“There’s not a thirty minute color.”

“Why would you not make a thirty minute color?”

“What do you think the colors do?”

“The colors are timers!”

“That’s absolutely not true,” Lance says. “I saw the stickers, none of them were timers.”

Pox sighs, put-upon, and goes rummaging through her pockets. “If you press down the pink switch, then the green one, that’ll get you about twenty minutes, but you want to make sure that pink switch is really pressed down, it’s a compressor that’ll help delay the detonation. If you need longer than twenty minutes, just sort of… tap the blue one down, but not the whole way. And if you want a bigger explosion, hit the red one three times, and then make sure you absolutely don’t touch it again, understand? Make sure that’s the last thing you do.”

“What,” says Van incredulously.

“The colors help me keep track,” Pox says helpfully, as though that explains any part of what she just said. She triumphantly yanks a hand out of her pocket to reveal a lollipop, which she unwraps in one smooth motion and pops into her mouth. “It should be easy to remember, right, Dak?”

“Right,” Dak says, in a tone of voice that means that he absolutely does not remember.

“Right,” Lance agrees, which Van hope means that he actually will remember. “Roger that. Van, you good?”

“Doing fine,” Van says. She glances at Pox, who beams at her, lollipop poking into her cheek. “We’re… fine.”

“Good,” Lance says, clearly amused. “We’ll be out soon, don’t worry about us.”

“I don’t worry,” she says loftily. Pox snorts loudly, and Lance chuckles. “I don’t.”

“Course not. Be back soon.”

The radio crackles back into silence, and Van sits back in the driver’s seat.

“I won’t tell anyone you were on this job,” Pox says abruptly. It’s slightly muffled by the lollipop, but she’s looking at Van seriously. “Nothing notorious about you.”

“Thank you,” Van says. “That’s… kind of you.”

“But you have to tell everyone you know that I was involved. Deal?”

Van halfway smiles at that. “Deal,” she says. “You know you don’t have to sit like that, don’t you?”

“You’re right,” Pox says cheerfully, and slumps back even further so her head is resting on the floor. “Thank you.”

Van raises her eyebrows, but she decides not to ask. Maybe she’s better off not knowing.

(When Lance gets back, the first thing he says to Pox is “your explosions pack a hell of a punch.” Pox just smiles beatifically at him and pops a piece of candy into her mouth.)

**Author's Note:**

> Neoscum good? Neoscum good. If Neoscum good, come say hi on Tumblr/Twitter @waveridden!


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